Mayor Adams sidestepped a question Tuesday over whether he’ll submit enough petition signatures to qualify for June’s primary election, raising questions about the status of his reelection bid.
“As the process moves forward, you’ll see our announcement,” Adams told reporters at City Hall.
The mayor, his campaign hobbled by his federal corruption indictment and surrounding scandals, offered that answer after being asked whether he will by Thursday’s deadline file enough signatures to get his name onto the June 24 Democratic mayoral primary ballot.
Petitioning — the labor-intensive process by which candidates must collect thousands of signatures from registered city voters and then submit them for screening by the Board of Elections — started Feb. 25. At least one other candidate in the mayoral race, front-runner Andrew Cuomo, has already submitted signatures with the board, securing a slot on the primary ballot.
Adams’ 2025 campaign reported in its most recent finance filings last month it has paid a consultant more than $60,000 to help with petitioning services. Still, Adams’ answer Tuesday drew renewed speculation about his Democratic primary campaign.
“Anything other than a straightforward ‘yes’ on this question from Mayor Adams is bizarre,” ex-city Comptroller Scott Stringer, one of Adams’ primary challengers, told the Daily News. “He’s the sitting Democratic mayor and I would expect him to be on the Democratic primary ballot in June. If he isn’t, then all the more reason why we need new leadership at City Hall.”
Todd Shapiro, a public relations consultant who’s volunteering as a spokesman for Adams’ reelection campaign, didn’t return a request for additional comment after the mayor’s news conference.
Adams’ answer comes as he has for weeks spoken both privately and publicly about potentially running as an independent for mayor in November’s general election.
Those internal conversations — confirmed by sources familiar with them — have played out as Adams reels from record-low approval ratings, poor performances in Democratic mayoral primary polls and accusations that he is beholden to President Trump’s agenda due to the way in which the Trump Justice Department is seeking to dismiss his corruption indictment.
Adams did, nonetheless, ramp up his attacks on Cuomo at Tuesday’s news conference, listing off the various ways in which he believes the ex-governor has proven himself a poor manager.
“Good management is not PowerPoints and sitting behind a table acting like you are leading,” Adams said in a shot at Cuomo’s COVID-19 pandemic news conferences.
Adams’ broadside came after Cuomo over the weekend suggested Adams’ administration is struggling to hospitalize homeless individuals on the streets because of management problems, not because of a lack of legal authority.
Adams sought to flip that issue on its head and urged reporters to ask Cuomo when he last rode the subway alone and what he would do if he encountered a homeless individual in the throes of a mental health episode on the train.
“Ask him: How would you take that person inside if that person says, ‘I’m going nowhere.’ What would he do? He would manage it away? Is he gonna do a PowerPoint?” Adams said.
Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi replied by saying the ex-governor showed himself an adept manager with infrastructure projects like the Second Ave. subway extension and the overhaul of LaGuardia Airport.
“But hey, like we said last week when the mayor went on his last unhinged rant, desperate men — particularly ones acting as an agent of Trump — say desperate things,” Azzopardi said.
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